The Girl Who Got Tired of Waiting
by Nyah
Summary: ... and Crossed the Multiverse to Return to Your Ungrateful ****. Eleven/Rose, smidgen of River. Title courtesy of Absentia.


**Disclaimer: **

**Note: **Title courtesy of an extremely amusing conversation with Absentia about, amongst other things, Eleven, River, and the awesome that is Rose.

**The Girl Who ****Got Tired of Waiting and Crossed The Multiverse to Return to Your Ungrateful ******

He's expecting nothing, he is. And here 'nothing' isn't short for 'no expectations' or 'ready for anything.' He is actually expecting nothing. Not a thing.

Not even time. No ends or beginnings, ticks tripping, dripping into tocks. He's just parked here, between it all or inside it all. Fitted, somewhy, into a place that's not a place, into a space without enough space to exist.

Here in his blue box, existing in a place that doesn't. A place too small to be and so large as to be everywhere, to be the reverse face, the refracted image, of all that is.

He doesn't step outside, survey the voidscape. He's not at all curious to see space without edges, time without paths to wander or stray from or rewrite. He's not at all curious about the creatures that won't be crossing the breaches, the gods that won't be forging ahead, the cosmos that won't be forming.

He bounces his head idly against the console, considers a dip in the pool, straightens the lines of his tux.

He's expecting nothing. Not a thing.

But then, he's never expected her.

##

It's in his nature to be charmed, if he can, by the ins and outs of the universe. He dazzles all the bits and bobs and tiny beings of the galaxies, astonishes them with science that will always look like magic to people who can never understand it. A breath rises up in his throat to exclaim over her, make her quaint, put her in a box. _The Girl Who Waited_ he'd called Amelia Pond. And she's been doing it ever since.

A breath rises up to put her in a box, make her safe. For him and from him.

But he can't think what, and it sticks just there, and yes, no, he has no idea what to call her.

Bad Wolf? But no deities cross here.

Valiant Child? But that's at least half a lie.

The Girl He Never Expected? But once he expected too much, expected her forever.

"Rose Tyler," he says.

It's always been enough.

##

He knows far too many things about her immediately. It's why it took such a long time for her to break into him that first time around. He knew too much and was far too bruised to ask for more.

With a glance and a whiff and a taste of the air he knows she's stopped dying her hair, knows someone else does the ironing now, knows how long it's been for her (in far too many regards). He can smell the bits of the worlds clinging to her shoes, bits of places the TARDIS recreated with its dying, life-giving, light. He taste how far she's run. He can see how far she plans on running yet.

"_You_," he says, "are late."

"You're older," she says and he can see how young she looks in her eyes.

He's not a thing like what she remembers. And it's not something a person gets used to in just two rounds. He's a stranger occupying the space of her dearest friend, an impostor living the years that should have been hers.

_You're not cross_, he almost says, almost exclaims, almost asks. But he hasn't forgotten she loves him.

"You going to keep doing that? Looking younger every time you ... get older." And that was the first, tiny hitch in her demeanor. The rest has been inevitability and determination and suspension of relief.

She knows as well as he does that this is neither beginning nor ending.

"Well it's hardly about you this time, is it?" He knows there's a twinkle in his eye to soothe the sting. He's not terribly rude this time, though terribly not ginger. And he's more honest now than he's been yet. Because it's not about her this time. But the last? When he looked a bit pretty, sounded a bit Council Estate, felt a bit made for her? Well.

"Rose Tyler?" He's fitting his lips around the fullness of the words for only the second time when he fits his arms around her for the first. It's awkward, a little. She hasn't dropped the dimension canon in her haste to get to him. Not this him.

It's a jolt to the senses, the way she doesn't fit against him a bit like Amy does. It's not all complimenting angles bumping up against misplaced attraction. There's no thrill of danger radiating off her, no rebellious affection. There's no little girl who waited in a garden and turned him into a fairy tale.

She doesn't fit against him. She melts. Or he does.

Must be him. Because he didn't expect her. Must be him because he's the one to start the kiss.

##

He can feel the space that's not quite empty enough between his hearts. He can taste the way she's not for him.

"You're late," he says again when he pulls back, stops himself from dissolving any further. "I'm not the me you're looking for."

She smiles. It's gentle, somehow it forgives him. "We both know that doesn't make much sense. You're still you."

He nods. She understands better than Amy, wears the knowledge more gracefully than River. "But I won't be me unless you find ... him."

He touches her face, traces the lines just inches away. He was a haunted man when she found him, two lifetimes ago. He touches her lips and thinks of ghosts and footprints that don't look at all like boots.

She still looks far too much like the woman he remembers. A few days younger maybe, a few weeks. She's not for him. Not yet. Not anymore.

His kisses her again and it ruins him a little more, laps like a tide at the shore of who he's become, makes him dissolve back into the salt and brine of sweat of everything else that is. Devoted as Martha, stubborn as Donna. But she's always been best at being alive and inviting him to come along.

He kisses her good bye.

##

He was wrong. The void is not full of nothing. It's full of what's on the other side of cracks. Full of footprints that don't look like boots.

Inside the void is a box with a door to forever and a man who holds the universe and a ghost with bits of everywhere clinging to her boots.

##

He came out dressed for Amy's wedding. For cake and for dancing and for the Girl and Boy Who Waited. He came out expecting it all.

##

Outside, he meets River and he's not at all surprised. He hands her back her secrets and she doesn't ask about his, about what he saw inside of nothing.

It's written right on her face, the way she can see it written on his.

So he confesses, "Rose."

There's a twinkle in River's eye to best his own, to make him wonder at the shapes his ghosts will take between them.

"Rose Tyler," River says and she's grinning now. "The Girl Who Got Tired of Waiting and Crossed The Multiverse to Return to Your Ungrateful Arse?"

He nods, "That's the one."


End file.
